Social Feedback Loop in the Organic Food Purchase Decision-Making Process

To ensure the food industry continues to grow, it is vital to properly understand the factors that impact the purchasing of organic food. Research offers ambiguous findings about what drives consumers to decide to purchase food labeled as organic. This study advances the current theories on organic food-purchasing behavior, which overlook the importance of the two-way interaction of social norms and individual behavior, suggesting that the role of social norms may have been simplified. We suggest the causal processes associated with organic food decision-making involve the social feedback loop, a powerful force that takes the current state into the phase of transition. Positive feedback is key to maintaining and developing the sustainable behavior of the society, where an initial change in consumer behavior to purchase organic food is magnified when that change resounds through social norms. This is especially pronounced in Norway and Slovenia, where marketers can make more cost- and time-efficient use of persuasive messages and requests. In addition, we provide a comprehensive delineation of organic food purchase decision-making of close to 14,000 individuals from 15 countries that includes key psychosocial antecedents, along with Schwartz’s values, attitudes, social norms, perceived behavioral control, and intentions. Using a mixed-methods approach (i.e., statistical matching, spatial econometrics, structural equation modeling), the present paper thus intends to add to the understanding of environmentally friendly purchase behavior beyond unidirectional and single-theory relationships

An empirical analysis of the effects of student work and academic performance on the probability of employment

The theoretical relationship between student work and post-college probability of employment is ambiguous, due to the opposing direct and indirect effects on human capital accumulation. Student work may on one hand lower academic performance and thus harm the likelihood of getting a job, while on the other hand enabling students to acquire skills that increase their labour market odds. In this paper, we provide an answer to the question, whether the policy should encourage or limit student work, by using rich data which allow us to compare the effects of the two investments in human capital on the likelihood of employment. We use personal characteristics, socio-economic background, and academic performance in the propensity score matching to calculate the differences in the probability of employment for different amounts of student work. We find that only work experiences up to two years have a beneficial effect on employment prospects, while much larger effects are observed for improvements in educational attainment, like graduation and improvement in GPA. In the end, our results provide support for setting limits to the extent of student work during college, but certainly not for its prohibition

Differences in Leisure Time Physical Activity Predictors in Europe

This paper contributes to the literature by showing that discrepancies in leisure time physical activity between transition and non-transition countries are mainly due to lower activity by persons, who are in relationship, are older, reside in rural areas and/or have a lower income. Unlike existing studies our results of logit models show that, controlling for all other variables, females are equally likely (in transition economies) or more likely (in non-transition economies) to be regularly active in their leisure time than males. We believe that the reason for differences in results is omitted variable bias, since papers that find women to be less active do not control for person’s income

Reported time allocation and emotional exhaustion during Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in Slovenia

The absence of institutionalised childcare and education during the lockdowns, caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, put parents who worked from home in a stressful situation in which they had to combine the roles of teacher, parent and employee. This study aims to analyse how the closure of kindergartens and schools during the March–May 2020 lockdown in Slovenia changed the reported allocation of time, and perceived emotional exhaustion of parents working from home, compared to nonparents. We also focus on the differences in the impacts of lockdown between genders, status of family- provision and employment sectors of parents. Using data from a survey carried out on cohabiting and married individuals in Slovenia and applying a difference-in-difference estimator, we find that parents incurred a significant increase in their unpaid work burden, reductions in time devoted to paid work and leisure and suffered an increase in emotional exhaustion. Namely, Slovenian parents reported roughly 2 h less of paid and 4 h more of unpaid work per day during the lockdown in comparison to nonparents. The analysis also demonstrates that females performed more unpaid work and enjoyed less leisure before the lockdown, but the lockdown adjustment did not further increase gender inequality

The Effects of Subsidies on Firm Size and Productivity

This paper evaluates the impact of varying subsidy sizes and distinct program objectives on firm size and performance. The magnitude of treatment effects increases with subsidy size, although the marginal effects tend to decrease. We also find that treatment effects differ across subsidy programs due to their distinct objectives. Among these, labor-support measures are most effective at supporting employment, capital, and output while being most harmful to productivity. Contrary to theory, subsidies providing incentives for investments have no impact on capital or productivity. The treatment effects tend to decrease over time and are thus temporary. As recipient firms are more likely to receive additional support in the future, the effects of subsidies accumulate giving rise to permanent differences between subsidized and non-subsidized firms. However, the lack of productivity improvements in such firms questions the benefits of repeated supporting measures